Kitchen barrack, spring 1940 (photo credits: SS-photo, Courtesy of Museu d’Història de Catalunya, Barcelona: Fons Amical de Mauthausen)The shell of the kitchen barrack was completed in May 1940, at the same time as most of the prisoner barracks. Apart from the general inadequacy of the prisoners’ food (which had often gone off), the kitchen infrastructure could no longer guarantee the provision of enough food for the rising number of prisoners. Given the extreme physical labor and almost complete lack of medical care, particularly during the final months of the war, constant undernourishment was the main cause of the high mortality rate in the camp.